The games were already easy and they dumbed them even further down.

[YuGames]

These are all the battle related changes that have been applied to Last Recode:

-Unlike the PS2 versions, in which you were returned to the title screen upon defeat in battle, the HD remaster has added a retry feature that lets you restart the battle from the beginning. Internal correction is performed each time you retry, making it easier to defeat the enemy.

-Attack Power Increased – In order to keep the battle tempo efficient and stress-free, the amount of damage the enemy receives has been increased. (Damage received from the enemy has not been changed.)

-Hit Stop Reduction – Hit stops during attacks have been reduced and players can no longer get caught in an operation, which enhances the battle tempo.

-The amount of experience points acquired in battle has increased, allowing players to level at a better pace.

-You can now use the same item consecutively.

-Skeith’s standard shot bullet speed has been increased.

-Balance revisions have been made to enemies’ HP, attack power, charge speed, and the like in Avatar Battles.

-A stun gauge has been added above the enemy in Avatar Battles.

-The rate at which weapon proficiency rises has been increased.

-The level of difficulty for some formidable enemies has been alleviated.

-The amount of damage to the Flight Gauge and Morale Gauge has been increased.

-The probability that an enemy will inflict status ailments such as paralysis or sleep has been lowered. (The probability that the player will inflict these status ailments on enemies has not been changed.)

-The amount of additional damage during Beast Awakenings has been increased.

[Dr. Raven]

Początkowo opublikowane przez MegaMan:

Couldn't someone make a mod to make the game harder?

Eh, what's really the point? For the effort spent I mean. Takes a lot of effort to mod the game, and to figure out that perfect balance without going too over the edge. For one, achievements might not even work while modding the game, or they might screw up and unlock when they shouldn't.

Difficulty has to be tested, I don't think the .hack fanbase is big enough for that. Let alone there probably just a small chunk in this fanbase who actually want to mod it or play mods for it. I remember a super mario rpg diffiiculty mod that accidently had the final boss undefeatable till someone tested it. And it's really easy to mod super nes games, they have less content so less to check, as well as super nes game mods are extremely popular most of the time so they have lots more people playing said mods to actually figure out it was broken.

[Hitorishizuka]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Dr. Raven:

Początkowo opublikowane przez MegaMan:

Couldn't someone make a mod to make the game harder?

Eh, what's really the point? For the effort spent I mean. Takes a lot of effort to mod the game, and to figure out that perfect balance without going too over the edge. For one, achievements might not even work while modding the game, or they might screw up and unlock when they shouldn't.

Difficulty has to be tested, I don't think the .hack fanbase is big enough for that. Let alone there probably just a small chunk in this fanbase who actually want to mod it or play mods for it. I remember a super mario rpg diffiiculty mod that accidently had the final boss undefeatable till someone tested it. And it's really easy to mod super nes games, they have less content so less to check, as well as super nes game mods are extremely popular most of the time so they have lots more people playing said mods to actually figure out it was broken.

Modding the game should not be that hard. If anything simple mods such as making monsters stronger could be done.

The Forest of Pain has monsters that are much stronger than normal. Not only are their stats higher, they are also immune to a lot of the status effects in the game. Some even get new effects that make them harder to beat.

Now modding things that effects the game mechanics could lead to problems. A lot of the battle rebalance likely had to be done sense the game is now 60fps and every thing moves faster.

[Dr. Raven]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Hitorishizuka:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Dr. Raven:

Eh, what's really the point? For the effort spent I mean. Takes a lot of effort to mod the game, and to figure out that perfect balance without going too over the edge. For one, achievements might not even work while modding the game, or they might screw up and unlock when they shouldn't.

Difficulty has to be tested, I don't think the .hack fanbase is big enough for that. Let alone there probably just a small chunk in this fanbase who actually want to mod it or play mods for it. I remember a super mario rpg diffiiculty mod that accidently had the final boss undefeatable till someone tested it. And it's really easy to mod super nes games, they have less content so less to check, as well as super nes game mods are extremely popular most of the time so they have lots more people playing said mods to actually figure out it was broken.

Modding the game should not be that hard. If anything simple mods such as making monsters stronger could be done.

The Forest of Pain has monsters that are much stronger than normal. Not only are their stats higher, they are also immune to a lot of the status effects in the game. Some even get new effects that make them harder to beat.

Now modding things that effects the game mechanics could lead to problems. A lot of the battle rebalance likely had to be done sense the game is now 60fps and every thing moves faster.

If you wanted to release a half assed mod, then yes it wouldn't be too hard. However even changing simple stats like you doing less damage and enemies doing more along with exp values could make a boss fight nearly impossible for the gear/level you have or difficult in some areas of the game while others remain brainlessly easy in the majority of areas. If a modder doesn't wanna even check his work to make sure it functions on a basic level, I don't see why someone would want to play the said mod.


And hard modes are usually more complicated than that, you have to know what your changes are exactly doing. Each volume has 20 hours of story gameplay on average, which will be more considering the game will be harder to complete and thus take longer. Which means setting aside the work of actually messing around with the code and planning what you want to change, you'll probably take a good 50 hours minimum just ensuring the mod actually does it job.


Unless you want the people actually interested in your mod to take the fall when something game breaking happens, in which they'll be angry they wasted their time in the first place.

[YuGames]

And once again, there is also the fact that normal mode already exists.

Why would one have to spend 50+ if not hundreds of hours, as a newbie modder, just to somehow emulate, if it even works, a difficulty settng THAT ALREADY EXISTS?

Would it not make more sense for the game to have an option to access it?

I mean, they went out of their way to add a menu to select Cheat Mode, which is a whole different configuration, so even the interface is already there.

The amount of work it would take the devs to simply make the old configuration available vs a modder trying to somehow emulate it in a more or less acceptable/signficant way is not even comparable.

Asking people to mod something into something that already exists is so preposterous i cannot even imagine why would anyone propose it as a counter to this demand.

In any case, i guess it does not matter because in the end it is what it is and at this point is obvious that the only thing we can do is resign ourselves to the new experience and play the game as the devs have decided we must in this time and age.

It´s not like i am going to HATE Hack Gu in it´s current state, in the end it´s still hack Gu even if simplified, and i guess i can just resign to play it only and exclusively for the story this time around, also because i got no other choice to begin with.

But that does not make the entire situation any less stupid or pointless or avoidable.
Nor makes the reaction of some of the participants in this thread any less confusing.

[Hitorishizuka]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Dr. Raven:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Hitorishizuka:

Modding the game should not be that hard. If anything simple mods such as making monsters stronger could be done.

The Forest of Pain has monsters that are much stronger than normal. Not only are their stats higher, they are also immune to a lot of the status effects in the game. Some even get new effects that make them harder to beat.

Now modding things that effects the game mechanics could lead to problems. A lot of the battle rebalance likely had to be done sense the game is now 60fps and every thing moves faster.

If you wanted to release a half assed mod, then yes it wouldn't be too hard. However even changing simple stats like you doing less damage and enemies doing more along with exp values could make a boss fight nearly impossible for the gear/level you have or difficult in some areas of the game while others remain brainlessly easy in the majority of areas. If a modder doesn't wanna even check his work to make sure it functions on a basic level, I don't see why someone would want to play the said mod.


And hard modes are usually more complicated than that, you have to know what your changes are exactly doing. Each volume has 20 hours of story gameplay on average, which will be more considering the game will be harder to complete and thus take longer. Which means setting aside the work of actually messing around with the code and planning what you want to change, you'll probably take a good 50 hours minimum just ensuring the mod actually does it job.

Depends the type of difficulty mod someone is going for. Some games simply have enemies do more damage while others changes things a lot.

When it comes to GU I would say its best to keep the levels of enemies the same but increase their stats. Of course a person shall have to test the mod. It takes a few hours to speedrun through the game to test the fights. A person would of course have to do this multiple times to be sure things are working right and that difficulty spikes are not too high.

Even a few simple things could really help make a hard mode. Toning down the effects of some of the weapon/armor/accessory mods.

Giving certain enemies immunity to status effects. The doppelganger for example can't do anything to fight back if it gets charmed and or paralyzed. Once under the effects, the player is just pressing circle for a few mins to KO it.

This would also be something interesting to test. In GU damage gets multipled against characters when are too many levels behind what they are fighting. Also normal attack against enemies do not make them flinch or recoil. What if this mechanic were to be removed? This could lead to some interesting low level challenges.

[Hitorishizuka]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Saga:

And once again, there is also the fact that normal mode already exists.

Why would one have to spend 50+ if not hundreds of hours, as a newbie modder, just to somehow emulate, if it even works, a difficulty settng THAT ALREADY EXISTS?

Would it not make more sense for the game to have an option to access it?

I mean, they went out of their way to add a menu to select Cheat Mode, which is a whole different configuration, so even the interface is already there.

The amount of work it would take the devs to simply make the old configuration available vs a modder trying to somehow emulate it in a more or less acceptable/signficant way is not even comparable.

Asking people to mod something into something that already exists is so preposterous i cannot even imagine why would anyone propose it as a counter to this demand.

In any case, i guess it does not matter because in the end it is what it is and at this point is obvious that the only thing we can do is resign ourselves to the new experience and play the game as the devs have decided we must in this time and age.

It´s not like i am going to HATE Hack Gu in it´s current state, in the end it´s still hack Gu even if simplified, and i guess i can just resign to play it only and exclusively for the story this time around, also because i got no other choice to begin with.

But that does not make the entire situation any less stupid or pointless or avoidable.
Nor makes the reaction of some of the participants in this thread any less confusing.

I doubt people shall have to spend 50+ or 100s of hours making a mod. Yeah its going to take some work but only certain things in the game would be change. Changing stats should not be that much work at all compare to other possible things.

I doubt they went out of their way to make cheat mode. I mean the main thing they did is simply put Haseo at the vol's level cap and give him the best gear in the game.

You do have a choice with PC gaming. Plus the dot hack fanbase has some dedicated fans. Just look at the stuff they done with fragment. They did a lot considering how fragment is just a PS2 game and other things. Now with the case of GU Last Recode the game is on PC. It should be much easier to change a lot of things than messing with an emulator.

[Dr. Raven]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Hitorishizuka:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Dr. Raven:

If you wanted to release a half assed mod, then yes it wouldn't be too hard. However even changing simple stats like you doing less damage and enemies doing more along with exp values could make a boss fight nearly impossible for the gear/level you have or difficult in some areas of the game while others remain brainlessly easy in the majority of areas. If a modder doesn't wanna even check his work to make sure it functions on a basic level, I don't see why someone would want to play the said mod.


And hard modes are usually more complicated than that, you have to know what your changes are exactly doing. Each volume has 20 hours of story gameplay on average, which will be more considering the game will be harder to complete and thus take longer. Which means setting aside the work of actually messing around with the code and planning what you want to change, you'll probably take a good 50 hours minimum just ensuring the mod actually does it job.

Depends the type of difficulty mod someone is going for. Some games simply have enemies do more damage while others changes things a lot.

When it comes to GU I would say its best to keep the levels of enemies the same but increase their stats. Of course a person shall have to test the mod. It takes a few hours to speedrun through the game to test the fights. A person would of course have to do this multiple times to be sure things are working right and that difficulty spikes are not too high.

Even a few simple things could really help make a hard mode. Toning down the effects of some of the weapon/armor/accessory mods.

Giving certain enemies immunity to status effects. The doppelganger for example can't do anything to fight back if it gets charmed and or paralyzed. Once under the effects, the player is just pressing circle for a few mins to KO it.

This would also be something interesting to test. In GU damage gets multipled against characters when are too many levels behind what they are fighting. Also normal attack against enemies do not make them flinch or recoil. What if this mechanic were to be removed? This could lead to some interesting low level challenges.

The game isn't speedran quite that fast, unless you're cheating, which causes problems such as were you even at the average level in the point of the story that you should have been. World record for volume 1 alone is 16 hours and 23 minutes.


I mean theoretically you could just skip and cheat your way to the bosses, but then you risk overlooking the enemies that a normal person would have had to fight, and there could have been problems there instead. I mean even if you were cheating, it'd be pretty hard to cut the story part out of the game just to test the fights.



I wouldn't really care about messing with status inflictions if I were the modder, because even relying on them shows some interest and choice of intelligence in the game, even though it can break boss fights. I think the goal of a hard mode should be to at least force people off just mindlessly attacking things, right now stat effects aren't an issue because the doppleganger isn't even a threat without it.


I mean the real issue is haseo can win a 1v3 in tournaments against max level enemies just by running away and using his rengeki or whatever whenever the enemies do. I mean that was how brokenly easy the game was before.

[Hitorishizuka]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Dr. Raven:

Początkowo opublikowane przez Hitorishizuka:

Depends the type of difficulty mod someone is going for. Some games simply have enemies do more damage while others changes things a lot.

When it comes to GU I would say its best to keep the levels of enemies the same but increase their stats. Of course a person shall have to test the mod. It takes a few hours to speedrun through the game to test the fights. A person would of course have to do this multiple times to be sure things are working right and that difficulty spikes are not too high.

Even a few simple things could really help make a hard mode. Toning down the effects of some of the weapon/armor/accessory mods.

Giving certain enemies immunity to status effects. The doppelganger for example can't do anything to fight back if it gets charmed and or paralyzed. Once under the effects, the player is just pressing circle for a few mins to KO it.

This would also be something interesting to test. In GU damage gets multipled against characters when are too many levels behind what they are fighting. Also normal attack against enemies do not make them flinch or recoil. What if this mechanic were to be removed? This could lead to some interesting low level challenges.

The game isn't speedran quite that fast, unless you're cheating, which causes problems such as were you even at the average level in the point of the story that you should have been. World record for volume 1 alone is 16 hours and 23 minutes.


I mean theoretically you could just skip and cheat your way to the bosses, but then you risk overlooking the enemies that a normal person would have had to fight, and there could have been problems there instead. I mean even if you were cheating, it'd be pretty hard to cut the story part out of the game just to test the fights.



I wouldn't really care about messing with status inflictions if I were the modder, because even relying on them shows some interest and choice of intelligence in the game, even though it can break boss fights. I think the goal of a hard mode should be to at least force people off just mindlessly attacking things, right now stat effects aren't an issue because the doppleganger isn't even a threat without it.


I mean the real issue is haseo can win a 1v3 in tournaments against max level enemies just by running away and using his rengeki or whatever whenever the enemies do. I mean that was how brokenly easy the game was before.

Well there shall be more save slots now. A person could always have files at various points of the game to make testing easier. When going through certain parts of the story they would just skip the cutscenes.

I know all of the broken things cannot be changed but a lot of the stuff still should be able to be altered.

First people are going to have to get a feel for the changes in Last Recode. After people see how the game has been rebalance then they start to mess with the strength of enemies or Haseo and party members.

[YuGames]

I got the game for the ps4 and...well, let me simply explain how it has been so far:

I played for little above 2/3 hours, up to the point where you meet Yata.

I am level 17 having only played:
-The beginner quest with Gaspard and Syllabus
-The Chim King Quest to unlock Chim book
-The introduction dungeon with Atoli
-1 bookmarked quest from the forums to get the lv10 item.
-1 lv5/7 word combination quest to show a friend that wanted to see how the wordwheel worked.

On top of that, the amount and quality of the loot i am finding in these lv3/10 dungeons is brutally different to what i am used to.

I had 7 different spell books drop, about 10 weapons, some of which level 14, about 7 pieces of armor of all types and 2 permanent stat increases.

I also have obtained several copies of fire/water/poison/curse weapon customization items and some advanced aoe spell scrolls.

I also had 2/3 pvp encounters/rescues per dungeon and find lucky/unlucky animals in pretty much every occasion.

You can also pretty much trigger beast awakening every couple battles so long as you rengeki because it raises the bar a lot.

Right now, i find myself one shotting the mandatory introduction events because i am supposed to be lv 6 to 8 and i am lv17 instead.

Now, to be completely fair, so long as i was sticking to the story dungeons the game did not feel that different so long as i did not abuse the beast awakening, which i could have but held myself from doing so.

But the second i begin doing even a bit of side content/extra words i began leveling rapidly and getting all these loots and spells which soon made me unstoppable.

This was especially noticeable on the lv10 item quest from the forums, because the exp and loot in that dungeon was really high and brought me all the way to lv 15 from lv8 or so.

I also felt a notable difference fighting the Angelic Gores from that quest, as those used to be really durable and now they just last twice as much as a regular monster and do significantly less damage.

Ultimately, so far it feels like the game is balanced along simply playing it for the story and enjoying it lke a regular RPG, and insofar you do that, it does not seem like it snowballs too much, but if you do want to complete quests/books, do side content or are a player like me, who tends to clear all the content that opens up after each story segment, you will find yourself power creeping really fast to the point the next story segment will get one shotted.

This was clearly not the case in G.U, at least not so early on into the game and with so few quests available, but it is a fact here.

The difference is notable unless you stick to the story and in more ways than not just plain combat power.

Of course, in the end i just played for 2 or 3 hours so things could either slow down later on or snowball even further, so i will not speculate yet, but it is a different game.

Not necessarily for bad, but it is quite different.

[FamiJack]

Eh, as long as I can turn those options off and have a PS2 like difficulty then I'm ok with this.

[Nathair]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Comrade Jack:

Eh, as long as I can turn those options off and have a PS2 like difficulty then I'm ok with this.

As far as I'm aware the changes aren't optional.

[Mastropiero]

Mods will fix it

[Silim]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Saga:

But hey, do not worry, now you will probably just be able to spam X and occasionally rengeki on pretty much every single fight in the game.

Ah, you mean the exact way you could do already? These games NEVER required strategy in any way. Spamming basic attacks and Rengeki was ALWAYS the way to win, full stop. There's no single hard battle in them.

So people complaining about 'taking the challenge away' are dumb. There was no challenge to take away.

[Cress]

Personally, I'm 100% with Saga on this. If you are going to nerf the game difficulty, make it optional. Like a normal mode and hard mode (ps2 difficulty).

[Dragon Crisis Core]

Początkowo opublikowane przez Cress:

Personally, I'm 100% with Saga on this. If you are going to nerf the game difficulty, make it optional. Like a normal mode and hard mode (ps2 difficulty).

Or even harder add hard and insane dificulties. Want a challleng make it yourself if you die delete game start over.